Remembrance

I felt like I owed a debt to her that I could never repay. For her kindness. Her help. She was like a second mother to me. She and Mom were very close and got along very well. Now Mother was in charge of everything, and we had to help her. A mother who lost not only her husband and close sister, but also four other sisters and a brother without our knowing their exact fate.

Only one brother-in-law survived the war, Pineck, the husband of her younger sister, Erna. He contacted us after the war from Paris, while on a stopover on his way to New York. Mother and we three boys, were the only family he had left. She went to visit him in the United States in the early 1960s. At his death, Pineck left the three of us his humble possessions.

“We will never forget what you did for us in routine days and times of danger. The terrible tragedy that happened was a rupture that turned our lives upside down and illuminated an aspect of your personality that I, as a boy, was unaware of. My feelings and love for you have deepened. We will continue our lives in the spirit of your actions. May your soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life.”

Every year, Marco and I mark the day our father, Jo Reiner, died on the 24th of Shevat. I go to the synagogue and say Kaddish. We call each other and Sol, too, of course. I light a memorial candle. Sol always calls on 7 February; the Gregorian date speaks to him more.

In fact, for years, we had been led to believe that he was not completely honest – an opportunist, a fan of the Nazis – and that the noble gesture that night had been a cover for his bad name.

It turned out that the opposite was true, and that the rumours about him being a collaborator had been an excellent alibi for his underground work.

We knocked on the door of our former upstairs neighbour on Daniël Willinkplein, called Victorieplein since 1946. The same neighbour was still there! And she remembered us! Stunning! But even more astonishing was what she told us about our former neighbour, Dr de Clercq Zubli: he continued to treat Jewish patients even after the Nazis forbade him from doing so. He also helped provide food stamps to those in hiding. In May 1944, while treating a wounded member of the underground, Gerrit van der Veen, he was captured by the Nazis along with his patient. Gerrit van der Veen was shot and killed and Dr Zubli was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

After the war, he returned to Amsterdam and resumed his medical practice.

Dr Zubli’s Jewish patients gave him a trip to Israel on the occasion of his retirement. He died in 1967 before he could make the trip. I left the visit with our former neighbour full of admiration, but also sorrow for not having had any contact with Dr Zubli after the war.

At Berlin airport, we rented a car and drove about 100 kilometres south. We parked by the railroad and began to walk along the tracks to the 101.6 km marker. On our left, at the edge of the forest, we found a large tombstone engraved with the 16 names of the dead buried there; among them was the name of our father.

We spent the night napping in the car, which we had parked at the same place where the train had stopped almost 50 years ago. We settled into the car, having given up on finding accommodation in what two years earlier had been the GDR (East Germany).

First thing in the morning, we went to the Jewish cemetery, which had been established in April 1945. Two women with rakes in their hands were busy maintaining the area. We asked them some questions, and they advised us to contact Mrs Arlt for answers. We turned towards her house and then it turned out that someone had already noticed us and informed her about the foreign visitors: I saw her approaching us on a bicycle.

Over the years, she, along with her husband, Richard, had cared for the various mass graves and maintained the Jewish cemetery. She wrote the story of the “Lost Train” in a booklet called “Never Forget”. After the area became accessible following reunification, and the Lost Train survivors and their families began visiting the site, Erika Arlt began conducting extensive correspondences – with anyone who could read German. She regularly reported on local annual memorial events and occasionally sent out interesting newspaper clippings and New Year’s greetings.

When we visited Tröbitz, she was always available for us. It was a pleasure to meet her. She formally addressed us as “Mr” and “Mrs” and of course we called her “Mrs Arlt”. We did not offer to change this as she was the oldest among us.

The Holocaust did not take place on “another planet” and was not perpetrated by “devils”. We should all realise that every one of us is capable of moral decay: none of us is of a different calibre or superior to others. This is something we should always be aware of (which, unfortunately, we are not).

The following words are engraved on the stone:

“They will come again,

Will be heard again.

The free songs,

Carry an eternal memory for the dead.

And hopeful expectation for the living.”

(Russian song translated by Rachel)

These words are, of course, also in memory of our father.

We were seven: Oma Netta, who had come to celebrate the holiday with us and Father Sander, Mother Fre, Marion, Chanan, Ruth and me, No’omi.

We were standing here, after having been arrested by German soldiers and Dutch policemen who had suddenly appeared at our apartment announcing that we were to be transported to the Westerbork transit camp.

We had to restart life, without Father and without Ruth. We knew our stay in Holland was only temporary: Marion would join her father in the US, and Chanan and I would eventually move to the future Jewish State. There, we felt certain that the injustices of the past would not be repeated: there would be no racism, no discrimination, no persecution. Not directed toward us and certainly not perpetrated by us.

We thought mankind had learned its lesson and that peace among the nations would prevail, but we soon awoke to the bitter reality that we were wrong. All around the world, terrible wars are continuously waged, and terrible suffering is inflicted on countless victims.

Is there a way out of this terrible situation? Can we still find a way towards peace?

History, like life’s experiences, should help us develop and teach us how to cope with the challenges we encounter.

That implies that, foremost, we must have the courage to see the facts as they are, without being blinded by prejudices or diverted by the immense discomfort of the perpetrator’s guilt and that we must persevere and stand up against lawlessness.

In an effort to solve our ongoing conflict with the Palestinians or any conflict, the primary guiding principle should be our common humanity – rather than any specific ideology, however noble it may be.